Dr. Dre Profiled as Perfectionist, Workaholic for Beats Electronics

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Dr. Dre Profiled as Perfectionist, Workaholic for Beats Electronics

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There was much debate around the $3 billion Apple–Beats deal, and much has been said about both parties. However, when it comes to Beats, the spotlight has been on Jimmy Iovine… maybe because he has done most of the talking. How about Dr. Dre, the alias of Andre Young? He had an equally powerful role in lifting the Beats brand to its current state. The Wall Street Journal profiles the Beats co-founder and finds similarities between Dre and Steve Jobs.

For one thing: Dre is a workaholic, just like Jobs was, and he seems to share the same obsessions for perfectionism. While Dr. Dre is primarily concerned with perfecting the sound of the high-end Beats headphones, he also weighs in decisively on everything from TV ads to the Beats Music streaming service.

As one colleague says, Dr. Dre serves as Beats’ “cultural barometer” of what is cool.

But Dr. Dre’s process is mysterious, colleagues say: His assessments are usually immediate, personal and articulated sparely. He often dismisses ideas such as posing for clichéd photos in a recording studio as too “corny” or “cheesy.” Or he’ll wave them off with a terse “I’m not feeling that.”

Dr. Dre’s laconic style highlights his keen awareness of a universal dilemma, said Mr. Iovine: “Once you try to describe cool you run the risk of going perpetually to non-cool hell. The whole premise is not to talk about it.”

Similar to Jobs, Dre’s perfectionist impulse is coupled with disregard for artificial deadlines, according to Paul Rosenberg, lawyer and manager of Eminem, one of Dre’s protégés.

Dre is part of the Apple team now, and you may recall that while speaking with Craig Federighi by phone in front of the WWDC participants, he joked about asking Federighi, “What time should I show up for work?”